


Stranded

by TatteredTeddy



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Developing Friendships, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28735806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TatteredTeddy/pseuds/TatteredTeddy
Summary: Kallista Lamenti is horribly lost. On her way to find Ardyn, she may just meet some unlikely friends on the way.
Relationships: Ardyn Izunia/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	Stranded

“Ardyn! Ardyn, where’d you go? Please…? Please come back. Hold on. I’m hurt… didn’t you notice that I was hurt and I fell behind? Can you please… come back?”  
  
Darkness completely surrounds Kali. It feels as if she’s trapped inside a snowglobe, the sound of the world muffled around her. Her breaths puff out in the air in front of her, a cloud of gentle warmth freezing into crystals of ice the moment the outside world touches it. Her heart pounds as if it’s trying to break out of her chest. It’s so cold outside. Nothing is making a sound nearby. All she hears is her own heavy breathing and the echoes of the magitek troops marching through faraway streets.  
  
“Ardyn… come back…”  
  
…  
  
A figure in the darkness turns toward the sound of the voice. Light blond hair whips around his face in the cold wind and deep blue eyes squint at the girl in the dusty pink dress, kneeling on the cracked asphalt with her head in her hands. “Hey! Um… you over there. You okay?” The gunman assumes that this girl is just an innocent bystander, caught up in the chaos while everyone else was evacuated. She could have been hurt by a daemon. “Hey, c’mere.”  
  
Kali slowly sits up and her eyes flick over the boy’s figure, scanning him to be sure she can trust him. “I’m… I’m fine. I just fell.”  
  
“Riiiiight, you just fell. You got some of that daemon goop on your sleeve, you know.”  
  
“Yeah. I fell after one of them tried to grab me and I got away. I didn’t think you needed the whole story.”  
  
“Alright, well, this isn’t a safe place for you, you know. We should get you somewhere where they can’t hurt you. What’s your name?”  
  
“Kali…”  
  
“Nice to meet you, Kali. I’m Prompto. Is your leg okay? Are you bleeding or anything?”  
  
“Mm-hm.” Kali gestures to her skinned knee, dirty and bleeding and just overall a horrible mess. A bruise appears to be forming on it, but it’s hard to tell in the darkness.  
  
“Oh, jeez. Alright, you can walk on it, right? Let’s go, before another daemon tries to mess with you. There’s a shelter a couple blocks away for people who couldn’t evacuate. Let’s get you there and they can clean you up.” Prompto stands back up, but Kali takes a couple seconds to follow.  
  
“N-No… I didn’t evacuate on purpose. I’m staying here.”  
  
Prompto cocks his head to the side and makes a confused expression at Kali. “Say again?”  
  
“I’m staying with Ardyn,” Kali repeats. “I’m staying here with him. Where’d he go?”  
  
“Ardyn’s headed to the castle. You shouldn’t be there, you know. It’s not safe.”  
  
“No! I’m here with Ardyn because he’ll protect me!” Kali insists. “Do you know where he went?”  
  
“He’s probably in the center of town, pretty close to the castle by now. Why do you want him, though? He’s the enemy here.”  
  
Kali harrumphs loudly and crosses her arms, but beneath the stubborn attitude, her lower lip is trembling and her eyes sting with tears. “I just want Ardyn right now. He didn’t notice when the daemon grabbed me and I fell behind him and now I lost him…”  
  
“I, uh… I dunno what you’re talking about. Just… where do you want me to take you? If you’re seriously looking for Ardyn, he’s got to be headed to the castle. You really wanna go to the castle?”  
  
“Hmph, you don’t even believe anything I’m saying, do you?” Kali snaps, her voice trembling with fear below its distrustful tone.  
  
“Whoa, whoa, I never said that I—“  
  
Kali takes off running before Prompto can even try to explain. Her strides are too big for her small body, but somehow she’s carried by them anyway, just barely avoiding tripping and falling onto her face. “Ardyn! Ardyn, wait up!” she cries into the darkness, hoping that maybe, by some little favor of Lady Luck, he’d hear her voice echo off an abandoned building and wait for her to catch up.  
  
“Kali, hey, stop! I’m sorry! I believe you, alright?” Prompto shouts. “I believe that you wanna be with Ardyn right now. But you have to stay with me if you’re gonna be out here. It’s really dangerous.”  
  
In an attempt to stop short, Kali falls forward and hits the ground hard. She cries out in shock when she hits the ground, making Prompto jump back and then try to approach her again, this time a bit slower.  
  
“Hey, you okay?” Prompto asks. “Did you hit your head?”  
  
“Huh…? No, I didn’t hit my head. I just… ahh…” Kali stops to take a deep, shaky breath. Her hand slips away from her face to reveal a stream of blood trickling from her nose. A bruise is already starting to form on the bridge. She very well could have broken her nose from the fall. “Hurt my nose a little.”  
  
“A LITTLE? You’re bleeding like a stuck Chocobo! That thing’s gotta be broken!” He points to the blood on Kali’s face with a shaky hand. “You don't feel that?”  
  
Kali looks down at her hand and a look of dread crosses her face. “I feel it now…” she says softly. Her brow furrows and her face scrunches up into a pained expression. She’s not crying, but she looks like she should be. She brings her arms up to her face and buries her head into her sleeves, not caring that she’d probably stain them with her blood. All she cares about right now is something that’ll numb the pain, or at least distract her from it. “I want Ardyn…” she sobs. “I just wanna go to Ardyn… please… can you show me where he is?”  
  
Prompto sighs and looks over his shoulder, toward a tall figure who’d been watching the scene the whole time. “Gladio, come over here. This girl, I... I think something’s really wrong with her. She was trying to run toward Ardyn. I think once she gets herself together, she might try again. I don’t know how to hold her back without hurting her.”  
  
The taller man rushes over to his companion and stops short when she sees who he’s supposed to help restrain. Kali’s curled up in a ball in the middle of the street, completely still except for her violent trembling. Her dress is in tatters, the pale pink fabric smudged with dirt like a child’s pudgy cheeks after playing in the mud and the rain. He wonders if she’s scared or if it’s the strong wind about to knock her over. “The hell, you think I’m supposed to hold her back without hurting her? I’m twice her size.”  
  
“You’re way stronger than me, man. I trust you with her a lot more than I trust myself. If you need me to do the talking to figure out what’s going on with her, I can do that, but you’ve got to keep her from going toward Ardyn.”  
  
Gladio sighs and somewhat awkwardly puts his hands on Kali’s shoulders. “Okay, just… just cooperate—“  
  
The moment Kali feels the second presence behind her, she jumps up and takes off like a rocket. “NO! NO, I WANT ARDYN! I WANT ARDYN!”  
  
Gladio just stands still and stares at Kali in horror. This is what he’s got to deal with, huh? Good thing Prompto’s a speeding bullet.  
  
Prompto takes off running after Kali. She’s surprisingly fast on her feet, but he’s just a little faster. He manages to grab her by her wrist, but she doesn’t stop in time, sending them both falling onto the ground. “Come on, just stay with us! Ardyn, he… he isn’t safe. He’s the one who made this all happen.”  
  
Furious eyes turn toward Prompto, narrowing at him into a pair of blades that cut through his naïve belief that Kali didn’t know a thing about what was happening. “I know Ardyn,” she says bitterly. “Don’t tell me I don’t know him.  
  
I love him.”  
  
Gladio and Prompto both look at each other with the same shocked expression. That can’t be right, can it? Does Ardyn love this girl too? Is she one of those types who deludes herself into thinking her crush loves her back?  
  
“What do you mean, you love him?” Prompto finally asks.  
  
“I mean like I’m his girlfriend.”  
  
Another moment of awkward silence between Kali and the boys. Then Gladio speaks up. “I didn’t know he had a girlfriend. None of us did. You don’t mean us any harm, do you? This isn’t some kind of trap?”  
  
“No… Ardyn and I are very different people. We got brought together through some kind of weird circumstances. I just… I got really scared because he didn’t notice that I wasn’t there beside him.”  
  
Gladio approaches Kali, who’s straightening out her hair and brushing the dirt off her arms from when she and Prompto both went down on the asphalt. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re gonna take you to Ardyn, alright? I, uh… I never introduced myself. I’m Gladio.”  
  
Kali sniffles and wipes away the tears that had started to bubble up in her eyes again. “I-I’m Kali.”  
  
“Are you hurt or anything?” Gladio asks, his voice restrained so as not to scare her off.  
  
“Y-Yeah. I messed up my knee before, but that’s all. I can still keep up with you guys.”  
  
“You’re too upset for that. Come on.” Gladio stands up and picks Kali up with him. The gesture is actually quite comforting to Kali, and she curls up in a ball and closes her eyes. Upon closer inspection, Gladio can tell that Kali’s exhausted from all the stress she’s clearly been under. All the panic in Insomnia could stress anyone out, but getting attacked by a daemon and having to see it all go down firsthand because she’s so close to Ardyn… he couldn’t imagine being in her position. “So you just wanna get back to him, that’s all?”  
  
“Yeah… I think he’s a bit out of it now that his plan became a reality. I should probably be there to restabilize him a little,” Kali sighs. “I… I don’t think it’ll solve any of what’s happening here, but at least I can probably talk him out of any really rash decisions.”  
  
“Hmph, that’s better than nothing, I guess,” Prompto laughs. “He’s already made a few too many of those. If you really do have that power over him, I think everyone would appreciate that.”  
  
Kali smiles weakly and instinctively leans her head against Gladio’s shoulder. She doesn’t really even notice she’s doing it until he gently nudges the top of her head with his chin. “Hey, you tired?” he whispers to her.  
  
“Yeah… pretty tired. It’s been scary.”  
  
“Tell me about it.” Gladio looks up at the pitch-dark sky with a frustrated expression.  
  
“Hey, cut her some slack!” Prompto cuts in. “She’s probably seen all this from a way closer perspective than we have, you know. This has gotta be hard for her.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gladio sighs. “Are you, uh… you all good?” he asks Kali. “Been taking all this well?”  
  
“Not really, to be totally honest. It’s pretty hard, you know… basically being his only sense of stability. He’s been losing control lately. His traumas are all kind of hitting him at the same time. I know you guys probably don’t want to think about his side of the story, but it’s been affecting me too, because he’s so important to me.”  
  
Gladio shrugs his shoulders. “Eh, I get that. I guess I understand how his issues coming out like this could be hard for you. Being his girlfriend and all.”  
  
“Yeah… I just… wanna be with him right now. N-Not in that way… I just wanna be by his side, you know?”  
  
“Yeah. Of course.”  
  
Kali’s eyes slowly start to shut, the calm motion of feeling each of Gladio’s steps making her feel like a baby being rocked. Her sweater has been dampened by the rain, but it still feels warm, at least in comparison to her rain-soaked dress. “How far are we from the castle…?” she whispers, her voice weighed down with sleepiness.  
  
“Not too far,” Prompto pipes up. “Man, it’s kinda wild that we met you of all people. We’re pretty close with Noct, and you’re dating Ardyn. Not sure how the hell we’re getting along.”  
  
“Hah, I’m glad you consider us to be getting along,” Kali laughs weakly. “I mean, I think I just broke my nose trying to run away from you.”  
  
“Damn, you’re laughing through a broken nose?” Gladio cuts in.  
  
“Yeah… I do that a lot. Sometimes you just kinda have to laugh through pain, you know? Make fun of it to help yourself cope.”  
  
“I guess you’re right, huh? We’re probably all gonna need a lot of that in the coming days.”  
  
Gladio stops short and looks up at the tall, intimidating building in front of him. The castle usually looks quite regal, but tonight, it looks terrifying. This isn’t the place he knew. This isn’t Noct’s home. This isn’t where he got lectured at by Regis when he and Noct refused to come up for dinner because they were in the middle of a video game, or where he and Prompto taunted Noct about the arranged marriage to Lunafreya. This isn’t his best friend’s home. It’s not anyone’s home. “Well…” he sighs, his voice shaking with a wave of heart-wrenching sadness. “We’re here.”  
  
Kali opens her eyes all the way and stares up at the heavy double doors at the top of a tall stairway. Ardyn would likely be inside. She needed to get to him. She needed him so, so badly. “I can walk the rest of the way from here. It’s not too far.”  
  
“You sure you can handle the stairs?” Prompto asks.  
  
“Yeah. I can do it.”  
  
Gladio nods his head in agreement and sets Kali down. “You’re a tough cookie. The throne room is the first thing you’ll see when you go in, I’m sure Ardyn will be there.”  
  
Kali turns back to the boys and wipes a trickle of blood from her lips before addressing them. “Can you come with me…?”  
  
Prompto and Gladio exchange questioning glances, and then Prompto grins at Kali and nods his head. “Of course we can.”  
  
The dark gray stone stairs are steep and slippery from the rain. Kali’s eyes stay locked on each stair as she ascends them. The white leather of her boots shines with rainwater, almost seeming to glow under the light of the tall lamp-poles. Prompto and Gladio follow behind her, their steps in sync with each other. “Ardyn, please be here…” Kali whispers to herself over and over, a repeating mantra to comfort her and to sync her steps with.  
  
She comes face-to-face with the doors, which are almost twice her height. Her shaky hand wraps around the doorknob and she pulls it open with all of her strength. Before her, inside the imposing wooden doors decorated with ornate patterns, is the throne room, dark and quiet, only inhabited by a throne, another stairway leading up to it, and…  
  
“ARDYN!”  
  
The man in question stops on the top stair and turns around to face the great love of his life, standing several feet below him, shaking with fear and anxiety, a spattering of blood against her pale skin and the skirt of her dress in tatters. “Kali…?” he says softly, his voice quieted by the horror of seeing her in this state.  
  
“Ardyn, wait for me!”  
  
The chancellor begins to descend the same stairs he ascended before, a weak smile appearing on his face. “Kali, my darling, you came back. I was worried about you.”  
  
“Of course I came back. I would never just leave you like that. Could I just… say goodbye to my friends first?”  
  
Kali gives Prompto and Gladio a quick hug and then takes a step up onto the staircase leading up to the throne. “Sorry I left…” she whispers, her voice shaking as much as her body. “I… I fell and I…”  
  
The next step approaches quicker than she anticipated and she falls down onto the stairs again. She gasps in surprise, but nothing else really comes out. She doesn’t have the energy to cry quite yet. “Sorry… all of this has just been hard for me.”  
  
Ardyn bends down to Kali’s level and reaches a hand out to her to help her up. “I understand, darling. But I’m here now, you see?”  
  
Kali falls into Ardyn’s arms and buries her face into his shirt. She can make it back standing up if he’s holding her, but this day has taken all of her energy and her legs still shake as she stands with him. Tears spill out of her tired eyes as he holds her tightly against him and runs his hand through her hair. They both looked so broken but so relieved to be here together. Silence encapsulates the throne room, the only sound coming from anyone being Kali’s muffled sobs.  
  
“My darling, what happened to you?” he whispers to her, his breath brushing against her soft blonde hair. Usually, it’s the nice kind of messy, fluffy and soft and nice to play with, but now it’s just a flat-out mess, tangled from the wind and the rain and from running and falling and fighting to get to her love. She looks like she’s fought all of the elements to get to him. “What happened?” he repeats, his voice softer this time.  
  
“I’m sorry I lost you,” she whimpers, her voice shaking with every heavy breath she takes. “A daemon came after me. I’m okay now though… these boys, they… they came to help me.”  
  
“How nice of them. I’m very glad they took a moment of their time to help an innocent girl. Now, I’ll take it from here.” His eyes shift toward Gladio and Prompto, who stare at Kali in horror as he wraps his arm around her shoulders and the fabric of his coat hides her smaller figure. “You two are dismissed from your duties. I believe I’m the most qualified to care for her.”  
  
Kali ascends the staircase with Ardyn again, stepping back to let him sit down on the throne before she cuddles up in his lap. Her eyes flutter closed and she slumps over in preparation for sleep. Sleeping is all she can do right now.  
  
The throne room is silent again before Prompto and Gladio turn away to leave. The sound of their footsteps echo off the walls as they get further away from the couple atop the throne, ending in the sound of the heavy double doors opening and then slowly falling back into their closed position.  
  
“I guess I’m glad Ardyn cares that much about her,” Prompto sighs when the castle doors shut behind him and Gladio. “Didn’t really think he could do that.”  
  
“Yeah, me neither. But if one more person is safe from the daemons, I guess it doesn’t matter how they’re kept safe, right?”  
  
“Makes sense. We should probably set up camp somewhere. Further away from the city would probably be better.”  
  
Gladio looks out toward the edge of Insomnia. Out past the city limits it’d definitely be quieter and safer. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s getting kinda late, if we’re gonna do that we should do it soon.” 

That was the last time they would see Kali for a few years. Of course, they would find her again later, each at vastly different moments. But at that moment, their only priority was to find shelter, and Kali’s was to rest.


End file.
